Silent Seaweed

SuperK and I are getting ready to head south for a few months this winter.  We rented a small one bedroom apartment for our trip, fairly close to some family members who seem eager to have us visit, an oddity in my family - normally they're looking askance at what I'm doing.  I've also been talking to my distant immediate family who are suggesting that they're going to come and visit.

The thing about my family is that we're not a close-knit group.  We love each other and wish each other well but we've never spent much time together outside of fairly standard holidays.   When I lived only a few miles away in The Old City I got visits every 8 or 10 months.  After much angst and self-searching and introspection I attained some acceptance about this.  I saw my part in it - I saw my major part in it.  I've mentioned that all of these folks see the world through a similar lens, and then there's me: I don't have a lens of any sort.  I don't think they find me disagreeable, just odd and confusing, and since I am odd and confusing I can't get too worked up about this.

So the point is that the chances of my elderly parents traveling by jet airplane 3000 miles to visit me is . . . ahem, remote.  I believe that they believe they're coming but it ain't happening.  My mother asked today, during a phone conversation that I was barely listening to, if they could stay with us for a couple of days when they visit.  I guess they plan on spending the rest of the trip that they're not going to take with my cousin who has a real house with extra bedrooms and who inhabits the same planet as my folks.

"Sure,"  I said.  "That'll be great.  We'll have to get a hotel room when you're here because we only have the one bedroom place."

Comments like this reinforce the opinion of many if not all people that I should simply try not to speak.  I believe my mother is irritated that I didn't spend the additional 50% that it would have cost me to rent a place with an extra bedroom or two or three in case family members who aren't coming anyhow do come and want a free place to stay.  It's not that I don't want them to stay with us - it's that there isn't any place for all of us to sleep.

This was all counterproductive.  It didn't go anywhere good.  I could hear SuperK yelling from the back room: "Say yes!  Say yes!!"  But I had already spoken, and was still speaking even though I was thinking: "Why am I speaking?"

This permitted my mother to switch into martyr mode, a many layered affair with nuance piled on top of nuance, perfected after years of practice.  This gives her an excuse not to stay with us or to cancel the trip that she isn't going to take anyhow.  What's so irritating is that my parents have plenty of money.  They never spend any of it and they're still saving for god's sake, at 85 years old.  They're probably saving up for jet skis or a snowmobile.  I don't get it.

I don't get it, alright.